Operation Infatuate II: Sherman tanks at Westkapelle

[David Herbert]

Originally Posted by Alex van de Wetering

David, that's the odd thing.....it does look like the blade is upside down, but the arms are definately not upside down. They have a kink upwards to clear the dozer suspension, so the arms face the normal way up. Maybe the thing we thing is the point of the blade is actually some other piece of steel laying a few feet away from the dozer(?)

Alex

Sorry Alex but I think that you are wrong. When viewed from the side of a complete dozer, the braces that set the angle of the blade are parallel to and lower than the top edge of the blade frame as seen in Michels photos. That fits in with the whole assembly being upside down on the beach. Also in the zoomed photo you can see the circular saucer shaped depth plates just behind the blade that help to control depth of cut.

In Michel Saberly's photos you can see that he has highlighted that these dozers has their Cat works numbers painted onto the front of the armour. These are in the 1T series which denotes that they are tractors built under licence from Caterpillar. A Cat built D7 would be a 7Mxxxx and a D6 would be a 4R or 5Rxxxx depending on track gauge. Cat works numbers, for say 7M D7s, started at 7M1 and ran to 7M9999. The next D7 would be a new prefix, in this case 9U1 which ran to 9U9999 and then another new prefix. Changes were brought in as required and a new prefix did not necessarily mean a new model but often did. There are a lot of 3T and 4T D7s about which are post war license built 7Ms.

David

David